


Here's No Game

by ashen_key



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Aliases, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe – Daemons, Daemons, Espionage, Established Relationship, F/M, Late Night Conversations, One Shot, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashen_key/pseuds/ashen_key
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are reasons why Clint doesn't go undercover, and reasons why Natasha is happy keeping it that way. Their current mission is doing nothing to change their minds, or their daemons'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here's No Game

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many, many thanks to Tlvop for brain lending and to ladyoflorien for betaing ♥. Clint's daemon, Winona, is a [Red-tailed Hawk](http://i1111.photobucket.com/albums/h468/ashenkey/Avengers/daemons/WinonaRed-tailedHawk.jpg); Natasha's daemon, Ilariy, is a [Siberian Cat](http://i1111.photobucket.com/albums/h468/ashenkey/Avengers/daemons/IlariySiberianCat.jpg). Javelinas are also known as [peccaries](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peccary).
> 
> Title is derived from Suzanne Vega's _Stockings_ :
> 
>  
> 
> _Here's no game for those who claim_  
>  _to be easily bruised_

Mike Holland was an idiot, Clint reflected as he carefully applied a bag of frozen peas to his knuckles. An idiot by necessity, and on the whole Clint actually _liked_ the persona, but still. The guy was an idiot. 

“They were _judging_ me,” Winona muttered from her perch on the chair next to him, shifting her weight and ruffling her feathers. It had been a fairly-routine exercise: Nat needed to hook the target's attention, she'd flirt with a random guy in the same bar as the target, the agent playing her boyfriend would get visibly jealous, the target's attention would be hooked, and bam, trap set. The 'random guy' had been a kid in his twenties, all spiked hair, middle-class delinquent tats, and a bristling javelina for a daemon. In short, the kind of person who would respond to a jealous boyfriend by getting in his face, so Clint was forced by his own persona to punch him. Winona had swooped the kid's daemon at the same time, but her attack had been like Clint's punch: lacking in the trained lethality they normally employed in hands-on fights. Which were rare anyway, but that was undercover work for you: all close and personal and full of bullshit. 

Ilariy, sprawled out over the table as only a cat could manage, lolled his head to the side to peer up at Winona. 

“You were defending our _honour_ ,” he said, looking ridiculously fluffy and harmless.

Winona scoffed, choosing to snap her hooked beak shut rather than deign to reply 

“You're sulking,” Nat said as she walked out of the bathroom, carrying her first-aid kit. “Both of you.” Her voice was entertained, and there was a smile around the edges of her mouth. 

“I had to punch a guy,” Clint said, sounding perfectly reasonable to his ears. She gave him this _look_ , and she was still wearing Annie Roe's smoky eyeshadow, so the look was more impressive than normal. “I had to punch him with my _knuckles_.”

Mike Holland was jealous muscle to his gun-runner of a girlfriend. Mike Holland had never picked up a bow in his life. Mike Holland didn't bother about protecting his knuckles, because his hands weren't any more important than the rest of him. It would only be painful and annoying to Mike Holland to break his hand, instead of 'wham, bam, goodbye career'. 

“Welcome to my world, Barton,” Nat said, pushing her cat-daemon out of the way before pulling out the antiseptic cream for the broken skin on Clint's knuckles. “Most of my other selves have to act like idiots.” 

“I could lick it better,” Ilariy added, because Ilariy was a jerk like that. 

Winona herself hopped onto the table, still ruffling her feathers and more upset than Clint was indulging. As Nat took Clint's hand and gently started to rub the cream over the cuts, Ilariy rolled his way to Winona and started purring at her. 

“Not 'Larry',” Winona muttered. “Ila.” Then she folded her legs underneath herself and started to groom Ilariy's fur. The cat-daemon just kept purring, low and comforting and himself again. 

Nat still had Annie Roe clinging to her. It was there in the way she held herself, the way she flicked her hair over her shoulder, the way her hand turned out after she put the tube of cream back, like she was a card dealer showing that her hands were empty. Clint knew that this was her career, slipping on other people and walking around like Annie, like Natalie, like Rozsa, like whoever else she had in her head who wasn't Natasha. He knew, too, that Ilairy had to pretend just as much; he was Larry, he was Lars, he was the soul of whatever woman Natasha needed to be. 

No matter what alias Clint wore, Winona remained Winona. But this time, Mike Holland had to walk like someone looking for a fight before punching someone over his girl, and his daemon's bristling demeanour had looked more like a bluff than ever. Both Clint and Winona were irritated at the stupidity of it, but it honestly wasn't the stupidest thing either of them had done for the sake of a mission. Still, Winona's lingering discomfort was edging around his own feelings until he wasn't quite sure what was him, what was her, and what was them. 

“Is your hand okay?” Nat asked, and Clint focused. 

“Seems to be.” She held his hand in hers for another moment, then withdrew. It _felt_ like a withdrawal, complete with the ghost sensations of her on his skin. He flexed his fingers experimentally, and then put the makeshift icepack back on. On the table, Ilariy suddenly looked at Natasha, head cocked and his solid body still. 

“I'm having a shower,” Nat said, her face more closed off than neutral. All the jokes in his head about Mike and Annie having fictitious jealous sex evaporated. 

“You okay?”

“I hate Miami.” She got to her feet. “The bar gave me a headache. I just need a cool shower.”

As she walked through the hotel room, Ilariy jumped off the table and ran after her. Usually, he didn't. It had been disconcerting as hell to start with, but they were Red Roomers – Natasha and Ilariy behaved more like a witch and her daemon than human. Clint watched them go, and then turned his attention back to his own daemon.

Winona glared. “What?”

Screw it. “What's with you?”

She ruffled her feathers, talons scraping awkwardly on the back of the chair. “When I swoop people, I like to actually kill them. Not...act like we're incompetent.” 

Clint smiled at her, and he could feel just how faint and crooked the expression was. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.” Any other person, he might have offered something more sympathetic, but not his daemon. They knew each other too well for that, and they were _professionals_. Winona launched herself into the air to find Annie Roe's laptop while Clint put the peas back in the tiny freezer, and then they both ended up at the table. They went over old intel, added the new, and by the time Natasha and Ilariy wandered back out, they had actually been productive. 

Nat had pinned up her mostly-dry hair, but she had damp escapee tendrils sticking to her skin. She had taken off her make-up, and was wearing shorts with a comfortable t-shirt. It was a Natasha look, but her mannerisms were still a blurred combination of Nat and Roe. She'd be like that until after the mission. Her mission. Her mission that he had been called in for assistance; it beat playing nice in suits with INTERPOL, he'd give it that. 

“Your shower work?” he asked, and Nat shrugged, turning the movement into a deliberate roll of her left shoulder. 

“A little. I think-” she stopped, curled her fingers in Ilariy's fur for a moment. 

“You confuse things,” Ilairy said, bunching in on himself on the table. 

“ _We're_ not the spies.” Winona's voice was sharp, and Ilariy glanced at her. Side-eyed her, more accurately. 

“No, you'd be like James Bond,” the cat-daemon retorted. “Completely-”

“What Ilariy means is,” Natasha interrupted, “we don't know if we are _us_ reacting to the pair of you, or if we're still being Annie and Larry reacting to Mike and that Winona, or other combinations of the above.” Her mouth pulled to the side a little wryly. “I...should have remembered from Budapest. It's on me.” 

Clint studied her and Ilairy for a moment, and he could feel Winona doing the same. “Still mission-operable?” he asked finally.

Nat nodded. “Yes. Fortunately, you're playing my boyfriend, so if you get shot, I'm allowed to be upset.” There was a joke wrapped around her words, but you had to be in the business to find the truth of it entertaining. Or warped. 

Luckily, he was both.

“Would it be useful?” he asked, and she pulled a face at him.

“I'll keep it in reserve,” she promised, and then her bearing turned more serious as she continued. “We're here for just another couple of days, max, and then we're splitting anyway. I'm not compromised enough that we need to reorganise.”

“Okay,” Clint said, and he meant it. Right now, that was all he needed to know. Then he snorted slightly and shook his head. “This is why you're the spy.”

Her expression lightened again. “And this is why you're the guy who hangs back with a ridiculously fiddly rifle.”

“Soldiering,” Winona said, very slowly and precisely, “makes _sense_. None of that pretending b.s.”

Nat smiled at her, the expression mischievous. “Being other people is fun,” she said, as if they never had the previous conversation. “Did Kos give us any additional intel on the shipments?”

Clint nodded, and turned the laptop around so Nat could read the details as he summarised. She nodded slightly once she'd finished reading.

“I don't think that changes anything. Tomorrow I present Jimmy B with Roe's business deal,” she mused, voice low and a little absent. “Thanks to your hand, it has added personal risk. He likes that.”

“Think he'll take it?”

Nat's mouth flickered briefly with a smile. “It's mostly a solid deal, with a bit of uncertainty to make it interesting. Plus Annie Roe, who is so _visibly_ not available.” She rolled her eyes: Jimmy B's tastes in women were what prompted the punch-up in the first place. “So, he'd better take it. Otherwise, we're screwed.” 

He returned the expression, just as quick. “What's your thinking on back-up?”

“Potentially useful, but risky,” Ilariy said, even as Nat pulled the laptop closer.

“Just let me bring up the building plans,” Nat muttered. Clint could wait – like a pro, even. They had a few hours to get a plan together and _this_ , at least, was something they both knew how to do.


End file.
